Same staff on the same trains running on the same overcrowded tracks, using the same old signalling systems (which Northern trains have to wait at for Avanti/TPE/XCountry/TFW & East Midlands Railways to go past first by the way) as they are now.
All that'll change will be a new staff uniform & the trains will get a new livery eventually.
The main problem with the railways in the North is that there needs to be a massive (sniff!) investment in the infrastructure. This government, the Labour ones before it & the Tory one before that have failed in giving it the attention it deserves. The only way Northern rail services will be anything like our southern ones will be if this happens but it's a generation away at the earliest.
Depends if they change some of the staff, planning, overtime pay etc.
we have some friends that work for northern and they all said the same thing, the owners intentionally sabotaged themselves as they wanted out of the franchise. the government coming in and taking it away costs them nothing, them walking away from the franchise costs them millions in fines.
Things like having to train the drivers on new trains, at that point you cant have a new driving driving the train on there own so they had to double up the drivers, hence lots of cancellations. but at the same time ( give or take a few months ) they decided to stop paying driver overtime, meaning more cancellations.
even coming in and reinstating overtime will fix a lot of cancellations based on lack of drivers etc.
Holiday planning was another big one, they authorized too many staff holidays for school holidays while not paying over time resulting in a shortage of conductors and drivers.
Delays on our line as 1 platform is too small and instead of using logic and locking off certain doors they from a cab the bosses insist they do it via the locks outside, resulting in a constant 5 min delay at that one station every trip.